I don't think the artist is claiming the large blooming tree is real. Rather, it seems that this is a picture of his goal. He's only been doing this for five years. The picture in question looks like a much older tree. I agree that it's a bad, obviously shooped picture, but I doubt he was intending to mislead anyone. I think this confusion is more an issue of lazy reporting in the months since his TEDx talk.

They both involve humans manipulating the natural development of plants; if GMOs are "unnatural" so is tree grafting, and you do know those heirloom varieties didn't exist in nature either before humans bred them into existence.

Very nearly EVERYTHING we eat has been modified from its natural form by thousands of years of agricultural manipulation by humans. Do a quick Google and you'll see that corn, for example, looks absolutely nothing like its originating natural counterpart. You can say the same for apples, wheat, potatoes, cows, pigs, citruses, rice, berries, lettuces... I could go on forever. Without that manipulation, and the accompanying agricultural modification of our environment, we wouldn't be able feed everyone.

I find myself perennially annoyed, however, when my organic-loving friends cite fruits and vegetables that are the product of age-old selective breeding as "GMOs" (with a self-righteous sneer, I might add). What's more, in many cases, there's nothing inherently wrong with genetic modification. Rather, it's how that modification is agriculturally deployed that can make it problematic (eg: making herbicide and pesticide resistant crops so that we can deliberately overuse these environmentally-harsh chemical sprays).

So readers, when you're at a BBQ next week and you bite into a delicious cob of perfectly-cooked, organically-farmed sweet-corn, remember: what you're eating never existed in "nature".

P.S. - And I would be remiss to complete this rant without recommending Maggie Koerth-Baker's excellent article on the Lenape potato.